Abstract Background: One of the important technological advancements in the last three decades or so has been the advent of the mobile phone. Mobile phone addiction is becoming one of the biggest behavioral addictions. Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Objectives: (1) To assess the level of mobile phone dependency among undergraduate college students. (2) To assess the level of Nomophobia among undergraduate college students. (3) To find association between mobile phone dependency and Nomophobia with the selected variables. (4)To find correlation between Mobile phone dependency and Nomophobia. Material and Methods: A Nonexperimental, descriptive explorative survey approach was used for the study. Data was collected from 200 undergraduate college students who were studying at selected institute at Abu Road by non-probability Consecutive sampling technique. Standardized Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (TMD) and Standardized Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q) was used for data collection. Results: 41% students were found to be less dependent, 28.5% of students moderately dependent and 10.5% were found to be severely dependent on mobile phone. 36% of students were having low risk of Nomophobia, whereas 27.5% of students were of high risk for nomophobia and 18% were found to be Nomophobes. Significant association was found between checking of mobile phone, looking information on internet and mobile phone dependency. There was highly significant association between purposes of using mobile phone (talking/texting with family or friends) and mobile phone dependency. Significant association was found between access of internet through smart phones, and nomophobia. Conclusion: The result of present study clearly show mobile phone dependence among students and is indicative of increasing Nomophobia among younger generation.
Keywords: Mobile Phone Dependency; Nomophobia; Undergraduate College Students.